Klay Thompson

• 1. Introduction

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  Klay Alexander Thompson was born on the 8th of February 1990, the son of Mychal Thompson, the first overall pick of the 1978 NBA draft. That lineage would shape everything about who Klay became. But it didn't guarantee anything. What Klay Thompson built across more than a decade of professional basketball, he built on one skill that borders on the supernatural: his ability to put a basketball through a hoop from distances that leave most players guessing.

  By the time his story with the Golden State Warriors was complete, he had won four NBA championships, stood on five All-Star rosters, and helped transform how the game itself is played. He and his longtime teammate Stephen Curry would set and then break their own records for combined three-pointers in a season, earning a nickname that stuck to them both: the Splash Brothers.

  Then came the injuries. In the span of just over two years, Thompson tore his ACL and then his Achilles tendon. He missed two and a half full years of basketball. The question hanging over those years was not just whether he could come back, but whether the same player would return. What follows is the story of how that question got answered.

• 2. A Basketball Family

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  Klay Thompson grew up inside the orbit of professional basketball. His mother, Julie, played college volleyball at both the University of Portland and the University of San Francisco. His father, Mychal, was the number-one overall pick in 1978 and went on to an NBA career of his own. When Klay was two years old, the family moved to Lake Oswego, Oregon, where he became childhood friends and Little League teammates with Kevin Love, who would later become an NBA star himself.

  The Thompson brothers were raised as devout Catholics and carry Bahamian ancestry through their father. When Klay was 14, the family relocated again, this time to Ladera Ranch, California. He attended Santa Margarita Catholic High School in Rancho Santa Margarita, graduating in 2008. His senior season there was a preview of things to come. He averaged 21 points per game, led the school to a 30-5 record, and earned a Division III State Championship appearance. In the state championship game, he set a state finals record with seven three-pointers.

  His older brother Mychel played at Pepperdine University and briefly reached the NBA with the Cavaliers. His younger brother Trayce became a Major League Baseball player. The Thompsons are, by any measure, a family built for professional sport.

• 3. Three Years in Pullman

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  Washington State University, under coach Tony Bennett, was where Klay Thompson turned into a professional prospect. He started all 33 games as a freshman, leading his team in three-point percentage and free throw percentage while averaging 12.5 points per game. He earned a spot on the Pac-10 All-Freshman Team.

  His sophomore season brought a memorable early marker. Thompson led the Cougars to the Great Alaska Shootout Championship and was named its Most Outstanding Player after scoring a tournament single-game record of 43 points in the championship. That total stood as the third highest single-game point output in Washington State history. He was named to the All-Pac-10 First Team that season and finished averaging 19.6 points per game, second in the conference.

  As a junior, Thompson led the entire Pac-10 in scoring and earned All-Pac-10 first team honors again. He set tournament records in the 2011 Pac-10 tournament with 43 points and eight three-pointers. By the end of that season, he held Washington State's single-season scoring record with 733 points and ranks as the school's third all-time leading scorer. He declared for the draft after that junior year rather than return for a fourth season.

• 4. The Splash Brothers Era

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  Golden State selected Thompson 11th overall in the 2011 draft. General manager Larry Riley praised his shooting ability and expressed confidence that his defense would improve under new coach Mark Jackson. Thompson made the NBA All-Rookie First Team in his first season and quickly developed alongside point guard Stephen Curry into something genuinely new.

  In the 2012-13 season, coach Mark Jackson said publicly that Thompson and Curry formed the best shooting duo in NBA history. They combined for 483 three-pointers that season, the most ever by an NBA duo at that point. The following season, they broke their own mark with 484. They broke it again with 525 the season after that, and then shattered all of it with 678 in the 2015-16 season. The nickname Splash Brothers came from that sustained, almost impossible level of combined long-range shooting.

  On the 23rd of January 2015, Thompson put up the game that made the wider world stop and pay attention. Against the Sacramento Kings, he scored 52 points with 11 three-pointers in a 126-101 victory. In the third quarter alone, he scored 37 points, going 13-for-13 from the field including nine three-pointers. The 37 points set an NBA record for points in a single quarter. The 13 made field goals in a quarter tied a record set by David Thompson, no relation.

  On the 5th of December 2016, Thompson scored 60 points in 29 minutes over just three quarters in a 142-106 win over the Indiana Pacers, becoming the first player in NBA history to reach 60 points in fewer than 30 minutes. He became only the fourth Warrior to reach 60 points in a game, joining Hall of Famers Wilt Chamberlain, Joe Fulks, and Rick Barry, whose 64-point game had come on the 26th of March 1974.

• 5. Championships and Heartbreak

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  Thompson won his first NBA championship in 2015, when the Warriors ended a 40-year title drought. In Game 2 of those Finals, he scored a playoff career-high 34 points in an overtime loss before the Warriors closed out the Cavaliers in six games. The following season, the team won 73 regular season games, the most in NBA history at that point, but lost to the Cavaliers in seven games in the Finals after holding a 3-1 series lead.

  Thompson and the Warriors responded by winning back-to-back titles in 2017 and 2018. The 2017 playoff run was particularly dominant: the Warriors finished 16-1, the best postseason winning percentage in NBA history, and became the first team to start the playoffs 12-0. In 2018, Thompson played in his franchise-record 100th postseason game during the Finals and became the sixth player ever to make 300 three-pointers in postseason play.

  The 2019 Finals against the Toronto Raptors turned painful. Thompson missed Game 3 after straining his left hamstring late in Game 2, his first career missed playoff game. He returned in Game 4 and scored 28 points. In Game 6, he had 30 points and was still on the court in the third quarter when he tore his ACL. The Warriors lost that game 114-110 and the series. He finished those playoffs third all-time in career postseason three-pointers with 374, behind only Stephen Curry and Ray Allen.

  On the 1st of July 2019, Thompson agreed to stay with the Warriors on a five-year, $190 million contract. Surgery followed the next day. The recovery would stretch far longer than anyone anticipated, because in November 2020, it was announced that he had also torn his Achilles tendon in a pickup game in Los Angeles, costing him the entire 2020-21 season as well.

• 6. The Return and a Fourth Ring

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  Thompson announced on the 8th of January 2022 that he would play the following night against the Cleveland Cavaliers. He scored 17 points in 20 minutes as the Warriors won 96-82. The rust was real, but it burned off quickly. By March he was scoring 38 points against the reigning champion Milwaukee Bucks. In the final game of the regular season, he poured in 41 points to clinch the Warriors' third seed in the Western Conference.

  In the 2022 playoffs, Thompson climbed past Ray Allen into third place on the all-time postseason three-pointers list. During the Finals against the Boston Celtics, he passed LeBron James for second place on the all-time Finals three-pointers list. He also joined Curry and James as the only players in NBA history to make at least 100 three-pointers on the championship stage. Golden State won the series in six games, giving Thompson his fourth title.

  Through the 2022-23 regular season, Thompson set new records in individual games, becoming the only player in NBA history to record multiple games with 12 or more three-pointers in a single season, doing it twice. He also joined Curry and James Harden as the only players ever to make at least 300 three-pointers in a season. On the 2nd of January 2023, he scored 54 points with eight rebounds in a 143-141 double overtime victory over the Atlanta Hawks, the highest-scoring game of his career at that point.

• 7. Dallas and What Comes Next

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  On the 6th of July 2024, after 13 seasons in Golden State, Thompson signed with the Dallas Mavericks on a three-year, $50 million contract through what became the NBA's first six-team transaction, involving the Philadelphia 76ers, Charlotte Hornets, Denver Nuggets, and Minnesota Timberwolves alongside the Warriors and Mavericks.

  On the 24th of October 2024, Thompson made his Mavericks debut with 22 points and six three-pointers in a 120-109 win over the San Antonio Spurs. The six threes set a Mavericks franchise record for most three-pointers in a debut game. When the Warriors came to town on the 12th of November, Chase Center welcomed him back with a tribute video before he scored 22 points on six made threes in a 120-117 Dallas loss.

  On the 25th of December 2024, in a game against the Minnesota Timberwolves, Thompson made his 2,561st career three-pointer, passing Reggie Miller for fifth on the NBA's all-time list. On the 15th of January 2026, he passed Damian Lillard for fourth place on that same list with 26 points and six assists in a 144-122 win over the Utah Jazz. Two days later, he surpassed 17,000 career points in a second consecutive game against Utah.

  At the time the record was set, Thompson stood as one of only two players in NBA history, alongside Stephen Curry, to record at least 10 seasons with at least 200 three-pointers made. His career shooting form, described by observers as textbook and picture-perfect, remains the foundation everything else was built on.